500 Years, 100 Watches

This book showcases one hundred remarkable watches from the past fifty years, highlighting their unusual designs, technical precision, and historic significance. Organized chronologically and divided by century, it features exquisite photography and engaging texts, including examples of early watch forms, precision watches, enamel and automaton watches, and complex watches by Breguet and Patek Philippe. The book appeals to sophisticated collectors, amateur watch enthusiasts, and anyone interested in the art and science of horology.

Format: Hardback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 07 November 2023
Publisher: Prestel

From two of the world's foremost experts on watch collecting, this supremely elegant and informative selection of one hundred watches traces the timepiece's evolution as it highlights unusual, important, and beautifully crafted watches of the past half-millennium. For centuries, people have been captivated by watches, whether for their technical precision, their unique design, or their historic importance. Each of the one hundred watches profiled in this elegant book stands out for one or more of these qualities. Organized chronologically and divided by century, the watches are presented in spacious, double-page spreads, featuring exquisite photography with engaging, incisive texts. Readers will discover examples of the earliest watch forms; an astonishing Elizabethan-era watch with an astrolabic dial; an early 17th-century watch encased in a single emerald; two of the earliest watches to incorporate the balance spring, a feature that revolutionized the portable timekeeper; and some of the first repeating and perpetual calendar watches. These are followed by the first lever watch, invented by Thomas Mudge; important precision watches; early 19th-century enamel and automaton watches; highly complex watches by Breguet and Patek Philippe; Sir Winston Churchill's yellow gold World Time Victory watch; a Rolex wristwatch made to commemorate Indian Republic Day; an Omega Speedmaster that went into space; and a Roger Smith wristwatch completed in 2023. Featuring exquisitely reproduced photographs that are appearing for the first time together in book form, this historic collection will appeal to sophisticated collectors, amateur watch enthusiasts, and anyone with an interest in the art and science of horology.

Weight: 2096g
Dimension: 249 x 309 x 31 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9783791379753